Negative Politeness Strategies Used By Characters In “Twilight” Movie Script
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ISSN: 2302-920X
Jurnal Humanis, Fakultas Ilmu Budaya Unud
Vol 17.1 Oktober 2016: 60 - 67
Negative Politeness Strategies Used By Characters In “Twilight” Movie Script
Gede Andi Setiawan1*, Ketut Artawa2, Ni Made Ayu Widiastuti3
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123English Department, Faculty of Arts Udayana University 1[[email protected]] 2[[email protected]] 3[[email protected]]
Corresponding Author
Abstrak
Studi ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui strategi-strategi Negative Politeness yang digunakan oleh Karakter dalam naskah filem Twilight dan untuk mengetahui faktor-faktor sosial yang mempengaruhi para Karakter di dalam naskah film Twilight.
Pengumpulan data dilakukan dengan menonton film dan membaca script untuk mengetahui tentang konteks dan situasi dalam film Twilight yang merupakan data utama dari studi ini. Dianalisis dengan menggunakan metode kulitatif. Data yang dikumpulkan dan diselidiki berdasarkan strategi-strategi Negatif Politeness dari Brown dan Levinson (1978: 131-211). Kemudian dianalisis juga dengan teori yang dikemukakan oleh Holmes (1992) yang dikombinasikan dengan Brown dan Levinson (1987: 74-84) untuk mengetahui faktor-faktor sosial yang mempengaruhi Negative Politness para karakter.
Berdasarkan hasil analisis menggunakan teori Brown dan Levinson, para karakter dalam filem ini menggunakan startegi 1 (Be Conventional Indirect), Strategi 2 (Question Hedge), Strategi 3 (Be Pessimistic), Strategi 4 (Minimize the imposition), Strategi 5 (Give Deference), Strategi 6 (Apologize). Dalam analisis ini, karakter dalam naskah film Twilight lebih sering menggunakan strategi terutama strategi 2 (Question Hedge) untuk berinteraksi dengan karakter lainnya dan tingkat kesopanan ini berlaku di seluruh percakapan sehingga menjadi prioritas pada naskah film Twilight. Faktor-faktor sosial yang mempengaruhi Negative Politeness dalam naskah film ini adalah tingkat sosial, kekuasaan, usia dan jenis kelamin para karakter.
Kata kunci: Negative Politeness, Karakter, Film, Naskah.
Politeness is one way of showing appreciation from one person to another, but it is not a simple thing. Being polite is a complicated thing in any language. It is difficult to learn because it involves understanding not just the language, but also the social and cultural values of the community.
Negative politeness strategy is often implemented in our daily lives as one of the ways to conduct activities that are relevant to social life and interact with other people, for example, in romance love, friendship, family, and industrial work or business. The data source in this study (Twilight Movie Script) is the occurrence of negative politeness. Negative politeness is one way through which we can socialize well in our environment.
This paper analyzes negative politeness strategies used by characters in “TWILIGHT” movie script. Twilight is a film with a love story with the background of a vampire characters that comes from the past, a blend of romance story and characters who speak with modesty from old generation and life in the modern era, making the story of this film relevant with this study.
Based on the background above, the problems of the study are as follows.
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1) What are the negative politeness strategies used by the characters in “TWILIGHT” movie script?
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2) What social factors affecting the negative politeness used by the characters in “TWILIGHT” movie script?
The aims of the study are classified into two:
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1) To describe the negative politeness strategies used by the characters in “TWILIGHT” movie script.
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2) To analyze social factors affecting the negative politeness used by the characters in “TWILIGHT” movie script.
In this section, there are three points of discussion; they are data source, method and technique of collecting data, method and technique of analyzing data.
This part deals with the result and discussion of the data. The data analysis is divided into parts; Negative politeness strategies used by the characters in “TWILIGHT” movie script and the social factors affecting negative politeness used by Characters.
In this strategy, the speaker tries to be indirect, but, at the same time, the utterance goes on record. The speaker wants to convey the same thing and something more than or different from what it literarily means.
Data 1. Character: Charlie
Charlie: The Sales lady picked up out the bed stuff
Charlie: You like purple, right?
From the dialogue above, Charlie applied negative politeness in his sentences to make H accept the changes, meaning that Charlie indirectly informs his daughter that her room has already changed without knowing it and hopes that Bella is happy with the changes.
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2 Question, hedge
This Strategy enjoins the speaker to questions or hedge such an assumption which is derived from the want not to presume and not to coerce H makes minimal assumptions about H.
Data 1. Character: Charlie
Charlie: The Sales lady picked up out the bed stuff
Charlie: You like purple, right?
Bella: Purple is cool, thanks.
Charlie: Okay
From the dialogue above it can be clearly seen that in the sentence , S minimalized H using the word “Right”; H would accept what S gave to H. Charlie, as Bella’s father, didn’t know what favorite color of his daughter was; the sentence above shows that Bella would agree and accept what Charlie gave to her; this strategy was possibly used to make the minimal assumption from the hearer to respect the meaning of utterance; from the speaker it can be clearly seen that what Bella said “Purple is cool, thanks.” made Charlie satisfied with his job.
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3 Be Pessimistic
It give redress to H’s negative face by explicitly expressing doubt that the conditions for appropriateness of S’s Speech act can be obtained. It may be realized by doing indirect assertions.
And this strategy is found in data:
Data 1. Character: Bella
Eric : You're Isabella Swan, the new girl.
Hi. I'm Eric. The eyes and ears of this place. Anything you need. Tour guide, lunch date, shoulder to cry on.
Bella : I'm kind of the “suffer in silence” type.
Eric : Good headline for your feature, I'm on the paper, and you're news, baby, front page.
From the dialogue above, it can be seen that ‘Bella used strategy 3 be pessimistic, I’m kind of the suffer in silence type’, meaning that Bella tried to stop the conversation and she could find all she needed alone; with her sentence she expressed negative face to stop the conversation.
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4 Minimize the imposition
Speaker redresses the seriousness of the FTA to pay the hearer’s deference. ‘Just’ conveys both its literal meanings ‘exactly’ and ‘only’
Data 1. Character: Bella
Bella : Would you mind just pointing me toward Mr. Varner's class?
Eric : You've missed a lot of the semester, but I can hook you up - tutor, cliff notes, and medical excuse
From the dialogue above, it can be seen that Bella applied strategy 4, that is, Minimize the Imposition to express her sentences; from her sentence it can be noticed that Bella tried to pay Eric as H deference using such an expression to minimize R, the word ‘Just’ delimits the extent of the FTA.
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5 Give deference
The speaker used the addressee’s honorific to make the conversation more polite. The use of the addressee’s honorific shows the far relation of the speaker to the hearer.
Data 1. Character: Bella
Bella: So let's say, for argument's sake, that I'm not smart. Would you talk to me? Tell me the truth?
In the sentence above, it can be seen that Bella used the addressee’s honorific in her utterance; she looked down of herself to make the sentence more polite before she got the answer from Edward.
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6 Apologize
The speaker indicated his reluctance to impinge the H’s negative face, by apologizing. It also redresses the impingement.
-Admit the impingement proposed by Brown and Levinson. The Speaker simply admitted that he was impinging the hearer’s face. Here is the example: Data 1. Character: Edward
Edward: Don't be. But we have to be careful. I can never lose control with you. Ever.
From the sentence above, it can be seen that Edward tried to improve his sentence using the negative politeness strategy to apologize by impinging the Bella’s face, meaning that Edward tried to apologize.
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7 Impersonalize S and H
In this strategy S does want to impinge on H by phrasing the FTA as if the agent were other than S. Or at least possibly not S or H alone and the addressee were other than H, or only inclusive of H. This resulted in different ways of avoiding the pronouns ‘I’ and ‘you’.
Data 1. Character: Bella
Edward: If you hate cold and rain, why move to the wettest place in the continental U.S. Bella: It's complicated.
From the dialogue above, Bella applied some negative politeness. Bella applied strategy 7, that is, Impersonalize S and H to express her sentences with clear politeness function. It can be noticed that Bella avoided the use of “I” by answering the question from Edward; the answer was addressed to Bella to avoid the use “I” using the answer “it’s complicated”.
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8 State the FTA as a general rule
Brown and Levinson argue that by stating the FTA is an instance of regulation, obligation or social rule. S and H can be disassociated from the particular imposition in
the FTA which is also a way of communicating that S does not want to be impinged by the circumstances
*There is no an example in data base as this film is Romantic film and there is no regulation, obligation, social rule from the country found in this data.
The main point here is to make the sentence more formal using the degree of nominalization.
Data 1. Character: Edward
Edward: Me, and my family, we're different from others of our kind. We're not nomadic, we have a permanent home. We only hunt animals. We've learned to control our thirst. But you – your scent, it's like a drug to me... my own personal brand of heroin.
Meaning: it’s can be noticed from the sentence above that in order to make the utterance more formal, the ‘S’ nominalized the subject, as can be seen in ‘your scent’ & ‘my own’. Edward tried to make the conversation more formal using the negative politeness strategy to nominalize the subject.
S find it difficult to speak because he is about to impose heavily on H. S can disclaim any indebtedness of H, by offering or requesting. This strategy is just the opposite of strategy 4.
Data 1. Character: Edward
Edward: I... don't have the strength to stay away from you anymore.
From the dialogue above, it can be seen that Edward applied negative politeness in his sentence; Edward applied the strategy go on record that is Go on record as incurring a debt, or as not indebting “H”. He difficult it to speak because he was about to impose heavily on Bella; he tried to ask Bella always to stay beside him even Edward was a Vampire.
The social factors affecting negative politeness used by Characters.
Dealing with people is not easy. Business deals, personal interactions, work place intermingling all require certain conversational skills. All these require a person to be polite. If one is polite, one can build up friendly ties. Nowadays man has become
entirely social and for this socialism, he has to come across people of different temperaments. And the effect of social factors such as (social distance, social status, age, gender, class) on language varieties (dialects, registers, genres, etc), and they are concerned with identifying the social functions of language and the way they are used to convey social meanings. The social distance between speakers has a tremendous impact on how they speak to each other. We are generally more polite to people who we do not know very well, and we generally feel we can be more abrupt with people who are close friends.
Holmes (1995:6) stated that women are more polite than men. Holmes derived this rather sweeping conclusion from two premises: firstly, that politeness is an expression of concern for the feelings of others and secondly, women’s utterances show evidence of concerns for the feelings of the people they are talking to. For example in sample: *Bella : Would you mind just pointing me toward Mr. Varner's class?
Eric : You've missed a lot of the semester, but I can hook you up - tutor, cliff notes, medical excuse
Bella (women) applied negative politeness strategy 4, that is, Minimize the Imposition “Would you mind just pointing me toward Mr. Varner's class?” Now let us compare with sample conversation:
*Staff : No, Every class is full, Just a Minute dear. I’m afraid you’ll have to
stay in Biology.
Edward : fine, just… I’ll just have to endure it.
Edward applied negative politeness strategy 4, that is, Minimize the Imposition in his sentence “fine, just...I’ll just have to endure it”. The different sentences used by Bella and Edward show the same strategy, that is, strategy 4 even both of them gave negative politeness in their sentences; Bella was more polite in her sentence using “Would you”; she realized that she was a new student in school even she was disturbed by her senior and Edward used the same strategy but he didn’t respect the hearer using “fine” in his sentence; he know that he was senior in school.
In this present study, the type of negative politeness and the social factors that affecting negative politeness are discussed. From the data classification, the negative
politeness strategies were applied by the characters in twilight movie based on the negative politeness strategies; they are Strategy 1 (Be Conventional Indirect), Strategy 2 (Question, Hedge), Strategy 3 (Be Pessimistic), Strategy 4 (Minimize the Imposition), Strategy 5 (Give Deference), Strategy 6 (Apologize). The Negative Politeness strategy which was mostly used by Characters in Twilight Movie Script was Strategy 1 (Be Conventional Indirect) while the least strategy used was Strategy 4 (Minimize the Imposition).
The relation of the social factors affecting the negative politeness can be seen from the analysis of the data above; there are 5 data found using the negative politeness strategy affected by the setting of their social factors in Twilight Movie. They are Eric, Bella and Edward; the social factors affecting the negative politeness strategy were Sex (Woman and Man), status (between teacher and student), and different languages.
Brown, P and Stephen Levinson. 1978. Universal in Language Usage : Politeness Phenomena In Esther N. Goody (ED). Question and Politeness : Strategies in Social Interaction , (56-310). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Holmes, Janet. 1992. An Introduction of Sociolinguistic. Women, Men and Politeness. London : Longman
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